By Neil the Ethical Werewolf If anyone's curious about why Larry Summers lost his job as president of Harvard, Matt Yglesias has the story. Summers tried to make a whole bunch of administrative decisions that weakened the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. For instance, he tried to centralize control of the university and spend lots of FAS' money on expansion. As a result, the Dean of FAS pushed him out. It accords with what I know about Harvard's administration (I, like Matt, was a student there) -- the FAS Dean is powerful, while the president is more of a fundraiser / figurehead. Also, I can say as a grad student who talks a lot with faculty about hiring decisions that this is the way that academic administrative politics usually goes. Make a couple silly comments and people will make noise, but you'll keep your job. Mess with powerful departments' power and funding, and you're gone. Right-wing attempts to present his downfall as the result of PC madness are either caused by a lack of knowledge, or by a desire to continue smearing universities as hotbeds of evil political correctness.
